Twelve Days of Christmas

On the twelfth day of Christmas, Old Man Murphy gave to me:

12 childrens' movies

11 loads of laundry

10 days of antibiotics

9 chapter books read

8 days indoors

7 trips to Target

6 days of fever

5 PRESCRIPTIONS!

4 dozen nebulizer treatments

3 sick kids

2 worn out parents

And a white Christmas not to be enjoyed.

It was not what we hoped, worse than what I feared, but there were still precious moments this holiday. To name a few: Kate leaning against the sliding door watching her neighborhood friends play in the snow Sunday, but not getting to play in it herself as she was recovering from walking pneumonia. Nancy pressing her snotty nose against her window to look at the snow, too sick to care about playing in it. Cuddling with my baby boy, too sick and tired to stay awake for even 30 minutes.

We were still able to enjoy Christmas Eve with Ryan's parents, and our Christmas Eve worship service with our church. My favorite gift was from my dad - a framed box containing the medals my grandfather wore on his uniform at our wedding, the last time he wore them. Watching my grandmother love on her seventh and youngest great-grandchild.

I had to let go of the nostalgia that Christmas time brings to my mind and instead embrace in a fresh way the reality that God sent His Son Jesus so that we can have One who can relate to us, who has been through what we have suffered and experienced, so that God can relate to us.

A few of my favorite snapshots:

Kate's elation over her American Girl doll. There were tears of joy.

Monie and Thomas.

Sick and tired boy. Worried mom.

New Christmas gifts made breathing treatments "fun".

Oh happy day! The Christmas tree is being kicked to the curb!

Snow, and trying to make a happy memory.

"Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what He suffered. And being made perfect he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him."

Hebrews 5:9

A Poem by Kate

Thanksgiving

By: Kate Burns

We gather together on this speashle day! To celibrate things that we'er thankful for. Cloths, food, family, freinds, doctters, firefighters, sheltter, toys and chuches.

On the day of Thanksgiveing there are joys all over the world. Can you think of what it would be like if you couldn't celibrate Thanksgiveing? No cloths, food, family, friends, doctters, firefighters, sheltter, toys and chuches.

We should be thankful for Thanksgiveing and what God has blessed us with!

Nancy is Thankful For:

My Bikes

A chicken

The Zoo

Scissors

Mommy and Daddy

"Little Dude" Hair

To India, With Love

Trick? or Treat?

Cheerleader: "I want CANDY!! I don't want to take a picture!"

Angel: "Oh, boo, I made the baby cry and that is not fun. I only like him when he's happy. I'm done."

Pumpkin in Denim: "WHHHHHHHHHAAAAA is everyone yelling and laughing and WHHHHAAAAAA are we leaving the house when it's my bedtime?!?!?!"

T Love

If you are a parent, aunt, uncle, or close friend, you find yourself making nicknames for the special kids in your life. Kate is "Bug" most often. We call Nancy "Nan" or "Nanners", some friends of ours call her "Nan-nan". Every now and then a "Rosie" will slip out. Thomas has lots, maybe because he's little. He sometimes gets "Tommy" by friends, mainly to irk me. Nancy Rose quickly corrects them. He gets "Little Man", "Sweet Boy", "My Boy" (that's me calling him that), "Chunky Monkey", "Wild Man" and even "The Best Baby in the Whole World". Okay, so maybe that's not a nickname. But he still gets called that....

Anyway, most often he is "T". I do not plan on calling him T, it just comes out though. And lemme just say, I can't get enough of my sweet T. He is the perfect addition to our family, and already has such a fun personality that we get to see come out more and more every day. Here are some pictures of Thomas, who is now 5 months old.

Kate was playing with Thomas one day and this made him giggle so much. She's saying "Thomas is an antique!" I don't know where she learned that word, and I've realized that's what happens when you have a kid in the house that's independently reading: they pick up on new words daily and their speech and way of talking is constantly changing. The other day she used "BFF" in a story she wrote. But that probably didn't come from one of her books....anyway. Watch this. Baby laughing. Super cute.

Snippits

I haven't posted many pictures lately. I'm too impatient to choose and upload. While the posts may be about what funny things the girls are saying these days, it greatly underestimates how often I pull out the camera to capture them and the other little moments of our daily life. Here are a few snippits from August to now. And by "now", I mean up until 2 weeks ago when strep throat turned our home upside down for a couple of weeks. All I want to say right now is that October 2010 has been an overwhelming month. More on that later. Maybe.

August 16 was Kate's first day of 2nd Grade. Her teacher is Mrs. (Katherine) Hawkins. I knew I'd like her the first time we met her: she told Kate, "we Katherines have to stick together."

An army of brushes, compliments of Nancy Rose.

When Kate is at school, I try and be intentional about my time with Nancy. This morning was lunch wearing dress up clothes and eating in the fort in front of the tv.

Nancy learned she can wink.

Thomas gets plenty of attention, even though it's not always from me.

Weekly trips to Michael's, Hobby Lobby and AC Moore began in August as well.

We took a quick trip to Sky Top in August, just to get apples for jelly & apple butter. This picture captures who these girls really are....

Minute to Win It games with our Community Group. Could you stack 3 golf balls on top of each other in 60 seconds? Mark Clark can, in less than 15!!

I call this Thomas's "carpool line face".

Ryan and I celebrated his 31st Birthday in Tiger Town. Horrible game. We still had a blast, and even got to tailgate with our friends the Bolings.

What do you think Thomas thinks of cereal?

I am in love with this baby boy.

We found an old birthday present for Nancy under our bed. Totally forgot to give her the hippity hop in February, but pulled it out on a day when boredom was threatening to bring the house down. Hippity hop to the rescue!

A Story I Want to Remember

A few things I want to remember about Nancy at 3 1/2:

She does not eat supper food. Almost never.

She loves to lounge in her bed in the morning after waking up, sometimes as long as 10 minutes. Partly because she likes her bed, mostly because she doesn't want to do her chores.

The only thing that does get her out of bed is the excitement of finding out what's for breabast (breakfast).

Her favorite color is purple. ("'cause red is for boys.")

Now that I remembered that, this story can be much more entertaining.

We have a family dinner game my mom loaned me; we often play it at dinner. It's a box of cards with questions like: "What's your least favorite house rule?" and "If you could choose to be anyone else in your family, who would you trade with?"

The question the other evening was "If you could change your garage into anything you wanted it to be, what would you change it into?" Keep in mind we only have one living space, one eating space and the girls share a bedroom. Ryan said a game and movie room; I said a playroom-slash-craft room-slash-laundry room; Kate said an art room. Here is Nancy's response (please imagine it with large circling hand motions):

"It would be RED! And all our beds would be IN IT! And we would get to eat breabast in our BEDS!!! And we wouldn't have to make our beds! And I wouldn't have to make my bed, turn off the light, or go to the potty."

"Oh, and we would not eat supper."

Who, Me?

Just in case there was any question who Thomas looks like....

I'm a Toys R Us Kid

Nancy: "Mom, I don't wanna be a grown up. I wanna stay a kid."

Me: "Why do you not want to grow up, sweetie?"

Nancy: "Because I don't want to be your age."

Momma's in the Kitchen

The smell of freshly baked cookies should elicit sighs of contentment and squeals of delight from little ones in the house. Right? I imagine in someone else's house they do, but in my house, this is the response when I bake cookies:

"Mom, what is that smell??!?"

"Well, darlin'. It's Kate's giant pizza cookie cake thing for her birthday party that Mommy made too big and it overflowed in the oven and burnt on the bottom of the rack. Aren't you excited about eating it?!?!"

At 3:40, the cookie burning happened, then a bottle of red wine was spilled in the fridge and a giant blow out of a diaper happened, plus Kate and I were trying to get ready for meet the teacher. I'm running through a smoky haze in the house without my shirt on, trying not to get poop on me while getting it out of my son's hair, and also closing all the hall doors and opening all doors and windows to the 98 degree heat outside to let the smoke out to avoid setting off the fire alarm. I opened the door to the garage, opened the garage door to allow the smoke to go out, and the dog runs inside, then out, then I forget about the dog for a few minutes until I remember I forgot about the dog and start hollering for her to come, she's taken off on a joy walk around the neighborhood. When my mom arrived at 4:00, all was well and besides the fragrance of burnt marshmallows burning our noses, she never would have known the chaos that was happening just seconds before she came inside. Too bad that wine was spilled. Coulda used some before meet the teacher.

Happy Birthday, Kate!

Our Summer, 2010

I just realized the "Tiny Tidbits" were the only posts I made in July; and truthfully, only 4 of the 7 "bits" were actually posted in July. Before the beginning of the end of the year begins for us - from August to December is an absolute whirlwind - I wanted to capture the lazy days of this summer we had.

"Lazy" may not be the right word. We had a newborn in the house, I was sleep deprived for many weeks, and we all experienced sort of summertime cabin fever from the ultra hot weather that kept us inside with the newborn most of the summer. But the girls learned how to play together, Kate has taught Nancy how to pretend and now Nancy will finally play Little People or with her castle all by herself and make up characters, and Kate read about 8 chapter books this summer, getting her a free pass to the water park from the library.

It was definitely a different kind of summer. No road trips, zinnias or Saturday trips to the downtown market. No morning runs, reading in the evenings because of crummy summer tv or staying out late with the girls because there was not more school. But we had lots of cuddle time on the couch, giggles from our girls becoming friends, and even were able to take our annual summertime date to the Shakespeare Festival at Falls Park. Lots of walks with friends, a visit from my best friend and her family from Aurora, an early morning breakfast with dear friends, canning experiments with one of my best friends, and playgroup on Wednesdays for the 3rd summer in a row. I think I'm ready for school and a routine (and yes, some space), but have enjoyed our sweet summer when we welcomed our Thomas home.

Thomas, 8 weeks.

Happy Little Man! He is so smiley.

Our new circle swing in the backyard. Fun for everyone!

Kate, Nancy and Mary Claire. A visit from the Bradshaws just after Fourth of July was the highlight of our summer!

Tiny Tidbits, Part 7

Nancy stopped saying funny things this week. I don't know if it was because I stopped paying attention, couldn't remember, or got very annoyed at her constant talking and jabbering (counted her saying "MOM? Mom?" 20 times in 15 minutes.) But Kate took the cake this week with this one:

"Is today 'International I-Don't-Know Day'? Because that's the answer I'm getting for all of my questions."

Tiny Tidbits, Part 6

A few things I still let Nancy mis-pronounce, because it's so darn cute and will be gone probably within the year:

"Photo Abble" = Photo Album

"Munch" = Lunch

"Smarshmallow" = Marshmallow

"Gramilla" = Granola

If I think of more, I'll add them to the post....

Here are more:

"Smoguito" = Mosquito

"Sumpfing" = Something

Tiny Tidbits, Part 5

"Moooooooooooooom!!!!" (not Mommy, mind you)

"I need some twol-up paperrrrrrrrrr!"

Tiny Tidbits, Part 4

Me: "Nan, please go in the living room and play with some toys or look at a book."

Nan: "Or......"

Tiny Tidbits, Part 3

Already have one for today. I will let you figure out the interpretation. At breakfast:

"Mom, when I will be sick again, I will have the die-nah-ree-na?"

Tiny Tidbits, Part 2

Nancy didn't say anything funny yesterday, so I'll use one from last week:

"Mom, who will be our new daddy when our Daddy dies?"

Tiny Tidbits, Part 1

Every day Nancy Rose says something worth repeating. This week, I hope to post one quotable per day. Here is Sunday's:

"Moooooom!!! I have a booger in my mouth!"

It's official; we have a nose-picker.

Trying to Understand....

Nancy: "Mom, are you nursing?"

Me: "Yes."

N: "Are you a nurse?"

Me: "No."

N: "Are you a Mommy?"

Me: "Yes."

N: "Are you a Mommy pretending to be a nurse?"

I know, sweet girl. So confusing.

Bringing Thomas Home

I've been spending my time in between feedings deciding if I will go to the bathroom, take a shower, brush my teeth or eat. There is little time to do much else. I have manage to pull a weed or two on my way to the mailbox, and the girls and I made necklaces this afternoon to kill time before Daddy got home. Is it really true that boys are more high maintenance as babies than girls? I'm starting to believe it. He is cuddly, though, and I take every chance I can get to let him sleep in my arms (when I'm not too busy coveting sleep myself).

We've had amazing help from friends bringing food and groceries and carpooling for us so that I can truly stay here and rest and take care of the kids as much as possible, and for that I am so thankful! I could not do it without them! And for a totally capable and competent husband that knows the drill inside and out and just takes charge. I wake up from a nap on the sofa, and look over and see stacks of neatly folded laundry and a sleeping babe in the bassinet, a quite baseball game on in the background. These days are truly precious.

Tomorrow, remind me that I said all that....

Poppa's the Man.

Kate's homemade birth announcement.

Mommy #2 and Mommy #3 keeping watch.

Introducing Thomas to the Gainors on Skype! Definitely a highlight for me!

Aunt Carol, with cousins Paige, McKenzie and Lauren.

McKenzie and and Zach with Thomas

A hopeful cousin Zach. Just wait a couple of years, Buddy. You'll have so much fun!

Uncle Scott, Ryan's brother, trying to taint Thomas's orange blood with a little mountaineer. We're okay with that.

My grandmother, "Monie", and her first meeting with great-grandbaby #7.

Sweet Dreams....